


Choosing to Love

by anoyo



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-09
Updated: 2008-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tieria never chose to love Lockon.  In fact, if he'd been allowed to choose, he probably would have said, "No."  Luckily, it wasn't up to him (not really).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choosing to Love

**Author's Note:**

> You know those middle-of-the-night musings that we all have? Well, Tieria has them, too. This is almost ridiculously sappy, considering I wrote it. That being said, it's probably not all that sappy. More . . . introspectively sappy. If that can even happen. Though this one is really Lockon/Tieria. Er, I promise. Written for [Zanzou](http://zanzou-chan.livejournal.com). Originally posted [here](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/119764.html).

It wasn't something he'd been looking for.

In fact, it wasn't something he'd even been considering. It had been so far from his mind that he hadn't even bothered telling himself, "This is not allowed." Because, honestly, what were the chances? What were the chances that one little rule might be needed?

But, apparently, it was. And because he hadn't made himself that rule, that disallowance, he found fighting it to be almost more effort than it was worth. He spent more time fretting about fretting than he had thinking about the original situation. In the end, allowance was merely a logical conclusion.

Or, at least, it could be written off as such.

He didn't think he was "in love," or anything like that. That was just a strange concept, being "in love." How was one "in love" in the first place? "Love" was an emotion, defined as "an intense feeling of deep attraction." "Intense" he understood. He'd been defined as "intense" on more than one -- more than a dozen -- occasion. "Feeling," too, he understood, though some might have debated it. And whether he wanted to actively admit it or not, "deep attraction" was something he could easily fathom. It was all around him, every day, every day for a long time. It was the "in" part of "in love" that had him confused. "In" was a preposition defining something as being surrounded or enclosed. He knew what the dictionary, and what etymology, said about the word. If one put all that together, "in love" translated to "being surrounded or enclosed in intense feelings of deep attraction."

But if that was the case, wasn't love a cage? Surrounded, enclosed, within, inside; all these words implied an inability to escape, a lack of choice, and that was simply ridiculous. There is always a choice. People have been arguing that for the entirety of human consciousness. An inner argument.

One side argues, "What if you're stuck on the edge of a cliff, and a boulder is barreling your way. If you jump off the cliff, you fall to a rocky gully. If you remain on the cliff, you're slammed with the boulder and thrown off the cliff regardless. You don't have a choice in being thrown off the cliff."

To which the other replies, "The choice lies in the time. We're all going to die: that's inevitable from the moment we're born. Where the choice lies is in when we die. We get to choose that for ourselves."

It was an endless debate, but he knew what side of it he lay on.

So he wasn't "in love;" he wasn't stuck, or enclosed, or unable to escape that deep attraction. He had chosen it, allowing himself to be wrapped in it, a wrapping that could be taken off when the need arose.

No, he wasn't "in love," he had "chosen love."

And maybe, just maybe, that was really what it was. When he had chosen to love, rather than deny, a weight had lifted away. The weight of loneliness, the weight of an impending decision, the weight of desperation; whatever title given to the weight was extraneous, as it was merely a weight. Quantifying that weight didn't make it any more or less real. It had been, and now it wasn't. And the choice to love had removed it.

A hand brushed his naked shoulder. Goose flesh rose, a combination reaction to the chilled air and the surprise touch. "What are you thinking?" that hand's mouth asked quietly, sleep-slurred. It was nearing on three o'clock in the morning. He'd been lying awake, thinking about decisions present and past, for nearly five hours. "You've got that look. The thinking look," the mouth continued, voice becoming less taken over by sleep with each progressive word.

To his surprise, he answered honestly. "I was just wondering about the difference between being 'in love' and 'choosing love.' The boundaries, the rules, the implications," he said, his voice slowly trailing off.

The mouth hmmed next to him, and the hand slid down his shoulder to the crook of his arm and rolled him over. His far-seeing eyes met the tranquil green ones belonging to the hand and mouth. "That's definitely middle-of-the-night talk," the mouth said, the green eyes twinkling. "In the middle of the night, the mind has two options: go silly from the overuse of its faculties during the day, or reach peak philosophical wax, the culmination of the wonderings of the day. And these thoughts only ever occur in the middle of the night, to help keep the sleep-deprived awake, give them a reason for their insomnia." The mouth smiled. "But, maybe, that's the good thing about middle-of-the-night thinking. Its something true, something unique onto you. Something only the culmination of you can come up with."

He let himself wander into the green eyes, examine the flecks of their irises, the imperfect circle of brown just around the pupil, the way the dim light caused the pupil to both dilate and retract, depending on the intensity of that green-eyed gaze. "Maybe that's it," he said. His voice was soft, not demanding, almost not his own voice. But it was a comfortable voice, and a comfortable situation.

A light flashed through the green eyes. "Then again, you seem to have middle-of-the-night thought whenever you're given a spare eighteen seconds to stare out into space. Maybe you're just a walking culmination of thought," the mouth said, its corners switching, it's tone hushed and playful.

Without warning, the laughing of the mouth became seeking. It claimed his own mouth for its prize, hot, and a little too dry, and somewhat scratchy, and completely comfortable. He allowed his lips to open in silent speech, a communication that, too, was perhaps only for the middle of the night.

The hand wound its way back to his shoulder, but this time pushed him easily onto his back, the lithe body attached leaning over him in a manner that might have been claustrophobic, but wasn't, somehow, and instead was rather releasing.

Again, comfortable. Relaxing, calming, and, at the same time, stimulating.

The mouth broke away from his. A hand, not the same hand, but rather its partner, came up to drag across his cheek and card roughly through his hair. "Have you ever thought," the mouth asked, its green eyes fixed upon his own red, "that maybe this is something you don't need to think about? That, maybe, it just is?"

The green eyes were serious, fixed upon his own, but he couldn't give credit to what their mouth was saying. "Nothing simply is. Everything is as something, for something, in some way. If it merely is, as an object without anything, then it is nothing." He smiled. "Nothing is all that simply is. And this is not nothing, so it has to be something."

"I suppose I can't argue with that logic," the mouth said, laughing, claiming his own again. The hand not carded through his hair ran down his arm to twine its fingers through his own. "But maybe what I meant was that it's okay for it to be something without us knowing what that something is. Without being able to quantify that something," the mouth said between long, hot, scratchy kisses.

He thought about that. It went against his nature, not to quantify something, not to put it under a label, and a category, and a purpose. If something was unquantifiable, then it's purpose was impossible to judge, to recognize. And if something was purposeless, then what was the use in doing it? Ultimately, what would be the point? Everything they did was for a specific purpose, a specific set outcome. That's how his life had been run.

Moving from his lips to his jaw line, the curve of his throat, his collarbone, the mouth slowly said, amidst calm, unhurried kisses, "Even if you can't quantify it, it's still there. It's just as real as the air, or space, or even anti-matter."

His own hand, the one not entwined, crept its way up along the mouth's side, across the hard plains of his back and shoulder blades, and into sleep-tangled, curling hair, pulling the mouth back up, meshing it against his own. "But, if it's unquantifiable, what's the purpose?" he asked finally, pulling the mouth forcefully away from his own and holding it by its hair a mere inch away.

Green eyes weren't offended, weren't shocked, weren't scandalized. They were, instead, deep, and understanding, maybe a little too understanding, and loving. "The purpose is the adding of something," the mouth said kindly, words a soft, gentle breath against his lips. "You're adding the feeling of love to your daily life, and all the things that come along with it, like comfort, and companionship, and protection, and a dozen other things. Maybe love's fleeting, and those things can come and go, but when they've come, they fill a space left for them. That's their purpose. To fulfill."

He released his grip on the hair, and the mouth again pressed to his, chaste, undemanding. He allowed it, returned it, even, and drew their joined hands up next to them, bending their elbows in tandem.

"Is that a good enough purpose?" the mouth finally asked, green eyes deep, searching, and completely fathomable.

Calm, comforting. "Choosing love." Fulfillment. None of these were light terms, but somehow a weight was released upon their understanding, rather than gained. Fulfillment. "It's a purpose," he said. "And I can believe in it." And that was, perhaps, all that mattered.

Not the true strength of the purpose, for who could decide such a thing? A purpose could not be analyzed with an objective eye, for what would an objective eye know of outcomes and desires? A desire was wishing, wanting, implying an incorporeal thing that was lacking. Belief was the agent for acquiring that thing. So, then, if a purpose could be believed in, wasn't that precisely what gave it metaphysical concreteness?

Having "chosen love" was strange. It wasn't expected, the doorway of the choice wasn't easy found, and the way back seemed not to exist at all. But it was, and that made it something.

"I'm glad," the mouth said, capturing his again efficiently, with deliberateness. "Because, for some reason, I love you, Tieria, and hell if you're going to get me to explain it more understandably than that."

He slid his arm more tightly around the mouth's body, pressing it against his own, pressing his own against it. "That's fine," he said slowly, staring into familiar green eyes. "I don't know if I could explain why I've chosen to love you, either."

"I think all that matters," the mouth said, hushed, reverent, "is that you did."


End file.
